(Nearly) full service has resumed!

It has been wonderful to host weddings in church again after such a long absence and celebrate two more last Saturday.

Easing of restrictions has also allowed the resumption of services for the livery companies with whom we have close associations.

Last month it was a great pleasure to welcome back the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers which serves as the City of London Livery Company for the Communications and Content Industries. They returned for their annual Richard Johnson service which normally takes place each June.

Richard Johnson was an eighteenth century Stationers’ liveryman who wrote The Paper Maker’s Assistant, a guide to calculating excise duties. He died in 1795 and bequeathed a small amount of capital to the Stationers’ Company. The conditions of the bequest included that a sermon be preached each year near the anniversary of his death on the text “Vita humana bulla est”, or “Human life is a bubble”.

This year we were delighted to welcome the Revd Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James’s Piccadilly, who preached the so-called Bubble Sermon (click to read the sermon).

St Bride’s Choir sang what has affectionately become known as the Bubble Anthem, I’m forever blowing bubbles, in a wonderful arrangement by Andrew Gant of the classic by Kenbrovin and Kellette.

At a previous year’s Bubble Service Ruth Gledhill, Religious Affairs Correspondent, The Times kindly wrote, “the choir’s dreamy rendition of a special arrangement of the Bubble Anthem, or I’m forever blowing Bubbles, is a memory that will not burst.”

You can give it a listen and see if you agree!

As COVID-19 restrictions are eased, we look forward to a return to our full schedule of services in the Autumn, ever mindful of the need for both caution and hope in our daily lives.